Poplar Lake

by Ron Thompson

  The savage knelt. His hand went to the back of Spunk’s neck. There was something in the other hand. A knife! Spunk felt his innards liquefy. He waited to feel the blade at his throat, to feel it slice, to see the sudden spurt of blood in the dim light of the fire as his life flowed to its miserable end.

  Instead he felt the rim of a cup on his lips. It clipped a tooth. Whiskey? Whiskey before death? Unexpected mercy, this.

  But it wasn’t whiskey at all, but water.

  * * *

  Pîwiwisakedjak had no experience with firewater. The drop licked from his palm was the first he had ever tasted. While Spunk lay comatose he took a more fulsome sample from the jug and spat it out. He looked around at the snoring giant, the disorganized contents of the wagon. Why had this red-white man been sent to him, he who was seeking a vision? Among the clutter in the back of the wagon, he found water and jerky to take the burning taste from his mouth. While Spunk slept it off, Pîwiwisakedjak examined his inventory of trade goods from top to bottom, wondering the while what it all meant for him.

  This was his spirit quest, but this stinking hulk of a white man was no spirit.

  * * *

  In the morning, Spunk came to and wondered what to make of the silent young savage with the strange eyes. He wondered if the boy was drunk. Struggling mightily with vertigo, Spunk moved warily around his makeshift camp, made a pot of coffee, and sat across the fire from the savage as it boiled. He poured twocups, handed his companion one, and watched the youth sniff it suspiciously. Spunk demonstrated with his own cup, sipped and made an “mmm, good” gesture. He watched the savage mimic him, take a slurp and scald his mouth and pretend he hadn’t. Spunk blew on his own coffee and took another sip.

  The Indian did likewise, and as it cooled he drank it down.

  A few minutes later he was pacing back and forth, agitated; twice he yipped like a coyote.

  Lordy, no more of that, Spunk thought, distressed. He put another pot on the fire and boiled water to make chamomile tea while quickly finishing the coffee himself.

  The tea calmed the young man down. He took evident pleasure in it and held his cup out for a refill.

  Spunk sat and wondered if this young Indian with the strange eyes was planning to kill him. If he were, he seemed to be holding off until he had indisputable cause. Spunk determined to give him none. He would prove his value to his inexplicable saviour. Via gestures, he directed the young man to help him unload a sample of his wares. Then he made a show of presenting them.

  Thadeus Spunk had no experience as a merchant, but he had seen carnie barkers aplenty in St Loo, and they were his inspiration now. Performing for his very life, he strutted like a rooster, gestured extravagantly, and spoke as though addressing the multitudes in a busy market. (“Hurry, hurry! You, sir, in the buckskin! Yes, you. Step right up. Get it here, the finest wares this side of the Yellowstone! Direct from Paris, France!”) He showed Pîwiwisakedjak the casks, offered him a small drink (declined); showed him bolts of cloth, metal buckles, fish hooks, axe heads, blades, muskets. The Indian stood placidly with his arms crossed, an undecipherable look on his face, although to Spunk his eyes looked disconcertingly wild.

  * * *

  Days later and far to the north, when Pîwiwisakedjak rode into his home encampment alongside Spunk’s wagon, a crowd gathered to stare and point. Spunk, surrounded by savages, felt liquid fear again, and not knowing what else to do, immediately launched into his carnie act, reasoning it had already saved him once. As he presented his wares, he looked to his young companion, as if expecting him to translate. And Pîwiwisakedjak, at the conclusion of his baffling spirit quest, confused, uncertain, and understanding none of the specifics of what the Yankee traderwas saying, silenced Spunk by re-enacting his original performance complete with extravagant hand gestures and loud solicitations, to the great amusement of all.

  That night, paying no account to Spunk’s remonstrations, the band began a great celebration, one that lasted three days, during which all of Spunk’s rotgut whiskey was consumed. Several men and women suffered minor injuries in scuffles or by falling down; one old man went blind, and another could not be wakened for a week. On the third day, there was a wild melee that went on for hours, during which one man was knifed, another was brained with a wheel from Spunk’s wagon, and twenty horses ran off onto the prairie. A small child, the daughter of Pîwiwisakedjak’s sister, was killed in the stampede.

  * * *

  When the party was over and the hangovers receded, when the injured had been tended, and the laments of the women faded to mournful silence, the elders met to consider Pîwiwisakedjak’s vision. It was not of the type to which they were accustomed, not a spirit voice or a ghostly apparition, but a flesh and blood white man with a cargo of trade goods and firewater. The elders were no strangers to firewater, but it had never been brought into their midst before, not in that quantity.

  They agreed it must never happen again.

  But still; the white traders had many things that were of great utility to the Cree. Even this strange one, who called himself Spunk, had items in his cargo (now strewn around the encampment and across the surrounding prairie, as if carried by a twister; the man was out there that very moment, nervously collecting it) that were of demonstrable value. The only way the band could obtain such things was by dealing with the Bay men directly—and their posts were all within the territories of other bands—or through Indian middlemen, who exacted a high price. But this man from south of the Medicine Line had come to their territory. The other bands did not even know about him. He could be their trader.

  The decision was made. They would let Spunk live. They would even help him collect his scattered inventory. Then they would bring him furs and buffalo hides, and trade for the goods they had just returned.

  Now the chief, who was Pîwiwisakedjak’s father, turned to his son. You will be with him like his shadow, the old man said. You will learn his language and how he trades, and you will make sure he returns next year with the things we need, but for which we pay too high a price to others. But we do not need whiskey, and he must never trade in it again. And if he does you will kill him, or I will kill you both, so that I may look my daughter in the face and say, your brother’s spirit quest went badly, but now the spirit of your child can rest.

  Pîwiwisakedjak learned Spunk’s trade as Spunk learned it himself. When the goods were gone and the wagon was full of pelts and hides, before the ground had frost in the morning, he travelled south with Spunk, him on his horse, the Yankee at the reins of his wagon with a woman, brought along to handle the domestic work, riding in the back. She was Rolls With Thunder, a beauty in her day, a widow whose man was dead two winters past. Over the summer, Little Trickster had noticed how Spunk’s eyes followed her around the camp, how hers met his. That was why he chose her to accompany them on the trek to the Missouri and beyond.

  They wintered in St Louis, sold the accumulated hides for a tidy profit, and in the spring returned north with a fresh load of supplies. As they rode into the encampment, Rolls With Thunder sat next to Spunk on the bench, her belly big with child; and he leaned close and murmured to her in passable Cree.

  Little Trickster, something of a natural politician, said years later that the most seductive lady in St Loo, no matter how much she smelled like a flower, was no competition for a Cree woman.

  In the years that followed, Spunk wintered over on the prairies and made his trip south in the spring. Little Trickster went with him on the first few trips, but Rolls With Thunder never again made the journey—Little Trickster insisted the crossing was too hard for children and that they needed their mother. And every year, late in the summer, old Spunk would come rolling north again with a wagon full of goods, in a hurry to see his woman.

  St Louis was a marvel to Little Trickster, and he took the opportunity to explore it, observing and experiencing the ways of the whites for h
imself. In the process he learned to see through two-tongued talk, became adept at poker and blackjack, and partook of the pale delicacies contained by crinolines and corsets. But as he matured, and especially after he took a Cree woman for his wife, he was content to let Spunk make the trip alone. He grew into a respected voice, a leader among his people, and when his father the chief died he became a chief himself. Wisdom flowed from his lips like the current of a river.

  * * *

  “This is a good story, but what does it have to do with the town of Poplar Lake? And the fact it floods?”

  “I’m getting to that. Sheesh. You need some context. Back when the Indians—”

  “Aboriginals.”

  “Pardon?”

  “You keep saying ‘Indian.’ They’re aboriginal, not ‘Indian.’” Genny’s eyes narrowed and her nostrils flared.“They’re First Nations people.”

  We were sitting on a bench under a tree downtown. That zit, just below her alleged First Nations cheekbone, was disappearing fast.

  We walked on through downtown, an area of about four square blocks that dated from Poplar Lake’s earliest days.

  “I know you love history,” Genny said, “but forget about it for a minute. You lived here. You grew up here. Show me your sights, your highlights. Tell me what this place was like.”

  I showed her the post office that my father had run before he retired, and pointed out the vacant lot next to it. “This was Town Hall,” I said. “It was built in 1906. Three stories, red brick, a big balcony for dignitaries to address a crowd. They say Wilfred Laurier himself once gave a speech from up there. It had this huge clock tower, too. You could see it all the way from Pîwiwisakedjak’s reserve. Just imagine!” I had to smile at the memory. “They knocked it down a few years ago. It was going to cost too much to repair.”

  We walked on past a few storefronts to a low boxy building clad in brown aluminum. “This is where the old Bay store stood.” And neoclassical gem it was, a paragon of turn-of-the-century Victorian commerce and moral certainty, with decorative columns, gargoyle capitals, and intricately etched floral cornices. The one-storey box now occupying the site was recent infill. A donut shop with greasy windows was the latest in a succession of tenants.

  On to the next block, I showed her where the Bank of Commerce was built in 1906. A Greek revival palace with a pediment roof, designed by the great Frank Darling himself, it was now the site of a parking lot. Next, down the street, the Dominion Bank building, a colonnaded Edwardian beauty built around the same time. When I was small it had been closed for many years and it was finally torn down in the early eighties. It too was now a vacant lot—but a promising Sold! banner had been posted over the faded For Sale sign.

  Genny kicked a stone into the weeds on the lot. I looked at my watch. “We should get back to the house. It’s almost lunch.”

  “How’s the economy here?”

  “The same as ever, I think. It goes up, it goes down. People just leave when it does. They go west—Alberta, B.C.—there’s always work out there. Kind of a shame, when you think of it, to have all this history, and they have to go somewhere where they don’t have roots.”

  Genny took another look at my roots and shivered, although the day was warm.

  CHAPTER 5

  That afternoon we went swimming with Simon, and later Victor came for supper. When he arrived, he swung an arm around my neck and gave me a noogie, then turned his eyes on The Visitor and said, “So you’re Genny. My little brother did not do you justice.” He shot me a look and wiggled his eyebrows like Groucho Marx.

  She also shot me a look, one I could not read.

  We sat in the living room while Dad went for drinks. Victor told us about the deal he had been working on. It was for a commercial property, and there had been a lot of animosity between the buyer and the seller. The previous night, his client had been ready to walk away, until Victor took him aside and convinced him he had to get over the personalities and focus on the issues. They had finally bashed out a sale agreement that morning.

  “Gee whiz, Vic,” Simon said. “Is it dangerous, what you do?”

  “Maybe not, Smart-A, but there’ll be a nice commission for my trouble today.”

  Dad served drinks—rye and coke for Mom and him, beer for the boys. Genny had asked for water.

  “Welcome home, old son,” Victor said, clinking his bottle against mine.

  “Good to be here.”

  “They were a whole week getting here,” Mom said.

  “We did a tour,” I said defensively.

  “So you’re real after all,” Victor said to Genny. “We thought you were his imaginary girlfriend. Like, he goes to England to meet a Canadian girl. He was always making up stories, you know.”

  I was sure Genny would tell him she was a woman, not a girl, but she laughed instead. “So the stories he tells about you aren’t true?”

  “About Victor, they’re all true,” Simon said. “About me, no. Don’t believe a word he says.”

  “We always figured he was queer as a three dollar bill,” Victor said. “Simon, you remember when he wanted to be a poet?”

  Simon winced. “Writer,” I said.

  “And he threw sidearm.”

  “There’s nothing gay about a sidearm, Vic. Besides, I was little. When I got bigger I threw a pretty good spiral.” “Oh, yes, yes, I’d forgotten. Forgive me . . .” At last, some credit where credit was due.

  “. . . it’s ‘gay’ now, isn’t it?” Victor nodded to himself, musing over Big City Ways, and giving me no credit at all for my pretty good spiral.

  “There’s an emerging consensus among scientists,” Simon told Genny, still looking pained, “that my brother Victor is a redneck hick.”

  “Yee haw.” Victor tipped his bottle to him and grinned. “What’s for supper, Ma? A hard day of success makes a fella mighty hungry.”

  “Your dad’s barbecuing steak!” she said. “But I bought chicken in case anyone doesn’t like meat. Genny? Which would you prefer?”

  * * *

  After we sat down to eat and had complimented every dish, Victor decided to entertain Genny with some childhood stories, most of which involved me soiling myself. I adopted an “Aw, shucks,” demeanour and endured the chuckles of fond remembrance. When he tired of this levity we all refreshed our plates and glasses and did another round of food compliments.

  “So what exactly do you do over in England, Genny?” Victor asked, flinging a grin at me. Besides my brother, his look implied; but perhaps I was oversensitive after all those poopy pants stories.

  Genny explained that she was a social anthropologist, interested in comparative gender roles in traditional and modern contexts. She was going to spend her time in southern Africa studying the influences of migratory labour patterns on traditional societies in the so-called front-line states, the independent, majority-ruled countries bordering South Africa. She had selected several tribal groupings, from the very remote Basarwa, to the eastern Batswana, the Basotho, the Swazis, and the Shona. She would spend several months conducting site visits and interviews, and planned to live among the Basarwa for a period of time.

  Well, that took the wind out of the fun times. No one immediately picked up the conversational thread. Victor, who had asked the question, now seemed absorbed in de-kernelling a cob of corn, and making fast work of it. Simon sat watching him, waiting and saying nothing himself, a small smile on his face.

  “That should be real interesting,” Dad said at last. “Never been to Africa.”

  That was a fact. Outside of North America, Dad had only ever travelled to Europe, and that was in the course of dealing with Herr Hitler. His all-expenses-paid tour had been severely constrained by the demands of the Allied campaign, and had been cut short by a stint in hospital to recover from his wounds. (Burns, actually. When a Sherman tank got hit, Victor told me on
ce, it boiled faster and hotter than a kettle.)

  Genny waited for Dad to say something more, but he seemed content to chew his steak.

  Victor dropped his cob onto his plate and picked at a tooth reflectively.

  “Genny’s already lined up her first round of interviews,” I said. “She’ll probably finish her PhD in under a year.”

  “And when you do,” Victor said, examining his finger, “what’ll it qualify you for? What’ll you do for a living?”

  “She’s going to teach,” I said.

  “Oh!”

  My mother had spoken little until then. Now, she became animated. What will you teach, she asked, and what ages? She knew the higher grades were hard for women. The older ones took advantage.

  “I’m not going to teach at a school, Edie. I’ll teach at a university. I’m going to do that and continue my research on gender roles. That’s what interests me the most.”

  My mother considered this ambition for a moment. “Gender roles. So you’re going to be a career girl.”

  Her intonation sounded unintentionally harsh and left a silence in its wake. I opened my mouth to speak but Simon beat me to it.

  “Mom.”

  “Yes, dear? Have some more corn.” She offered him the platter.

  “Not a career girl, Edie,” Genny said. “An academic. And your brilliant son here could be one too, if he wanted.”

  “Buster!” Victor said. “Why not?”

  “I don’t want to be an academic. I like what I’ve been doing.” That compound statement was only half true. In any event, what I had been doing in London was a mystery to my family. Something about risk, something involving repos, currency hedges, derivatives. It had taken me to the continent, and as the Iron Curtain fell, into the former Eastern Bloc.